Marc Hamilton's Webloghttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/
Marc Hamilton's Weblogen-usCopyright 2011Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:33:54 +0000Apache Roller BLOGS401ORA6 (20130904125427)https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_powers_high_tech_archeologicalOracle Powers High Tech Archeological Researchmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_powers_high_tech_archeological
Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:45:41 +0000GeneralWhile archeology often conjures up images of dusty treks across the Dead Sea searching for artifacts, the
<a href="http://www.inscriptifact.com/">InscriptiFact</a> system from USC makes use of advanced Oracle technology including
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/index.html">Oracle Database</a> and <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/application-server/index.html">Oracle Weblogic Products</a>, along with high tech
<a href="http://www.c-h-i.org/technology/ptm/ptm.html">Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI)</a> to bring images of not only the Dead Sea Scrolls, but inscriptions from 1000's of other archeological artifacts to students and researchers worldwide. I spent the afternoon yesterday at <a href="http://www.usc.edu">USC</a> visiting with Professor Bruce Zuckerman, the brainchild behind InscriptiFact. While getting to see in real life some of USC's archeological collections was amazing in itself, viewing the same artifacts in the InscriptiFact system was even more amazing.
<p>
While InscriptiFact includes artifact images dating to the early 1900's (the artifacts themselves are often 1000's of years old), some of the most amazing images are relatively new RTI images. Understanding how RTI images are created is best done by showing the Melzian Dome used to capture the images.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/MelzianDomeExample.jpg">
<p>
The dome has 32 computer-controlled LED lights and multiple exposures are taken of the same artifact using different lighting combinations and then merged into a single image file. Using the InscriptiFact viewer, a Java application that can run on any PC or laptop, a user can dynamically change the lighting on the image being viewed. Seeing is believing, so lets take a look at an example.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/RTIAndConventionalImagesCompared.jpg">
<p>
InscriptiFact provides the ability to compare conventional images along-side RTI images. Illustrated above is an Aramaic tablet from Persepolis, ancient Persia, with a seal impression. The images on the left are visible light and infrared images taken with high-end digital scanning back. The images on the right are versions of an RTI image, one showing the natural color of the object, the other using specular enhancement. Even to the untrained eye, one can clearly understand the power of RTI to bring often better than lifelike detail to ancient artifacts.
<p>
While the RTI images are visually the most powerful aspect of InscriptiFact, the real value of the system goes much farther based on the power of the InscriptiFact user interface and underlying Oracle Database. Take for instance the spacial search feature. This feature allows researchers to drag a box on a reference image and retrieve all images that intersect the box.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/SpatialSearch.jpg">
<p>
InscriptiFact is designed to incorporate, integrate and index all existing image data in a quick and intuitive fashion regardless of what repository or collection the artifact (or fragments, thereof) exist in. In the example below, the original table on which an ancient myth was written was broken, and pieces ended up in two different museums. Using InscriptiFact, a researcher can easily retrieve images of all the images for viewing on a single screen.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/IntegrationFromDifferentRepositories.jpg">
<p>
Not only is InscriptiFact a powerful tool in its own right for anyone from post-grad archeologists to grade school students, its a wonderful example of what is possible through the integration of advanced imaging, advanced database and Java technology, and the Internet to span both space and time. Visit the
<a href="http://www.inscriptifact.com/">InscriptiFact web site</a> to learn more.
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_grid_engine_on_awsOracle Grid Engine on AWS Cluster Compute Instancesmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_grid_engine_on_aws
Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:11:51 +0000GeneralAmazon Web Services (AWS) today announced a big step forward for customers who want to run HPC applications in the cloud with their new
<a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/">Compute Cluster Instances</a>. No surprise, <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/tools/oracle-grid-engine-075549.html">Oracle Grid Engine</a> fans like
<a href="
http://blog.bioteam.net/2010/07/13/grid-engine-on-the-new-amazon-compute-cluster-instances/">BioTeam</a> didn't take long to notice and try it out. Lets dig a little deeper into the new AWS Compute Cluster Instance and see what folks are so excited about and why Oracle Grid Engine is almost a must-have for customers wanting to take advantage of Compute Cluster Instances.
<p>
To put things in perspective, the new Compute Cluster Instances should be compared to other <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/">AWS instance types</a>. According to Amazon, a standard AWS EC2 compute unit is normalized to
"the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor". The new Compute Cluster Instance is equivalent to 33.5 EC2 compute units. On the surface, that isn't that much more powerful than the previous 26 EC2 compute unit
High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large Instance (although the name is certainly simpler). What is different is the Compute Cluster Instance architecture. You can cluster up to 8 Compute Cluster Instances for 64 cores or 268 EC2 compute units. With the Compute Cluster Instance, Amazon provides additional details on the physical implementation, calling out "2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad-core Nehalem architecture" cores per instance. Perhaps more importantly, while other AWS instance types only specify IO capability as "moderate" or "high", the Compute Cluster Instance comes with "full bisection 10 Gbps bandwidth between instances". While there is a certain value in consistency in advertising compute instances as standard EC2 compute units and IO bandwidth as moderate or high, I applaud Amazon on their increased transparency in calling out both the specific Intel x5570 CPU and the specific 10GbE IO bandwidth of the new Compute Cluster Instances.
<p>
So what about <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/tools/oracle-grid-engine-075549.html">Oracle Grid Engine</a> makes it so useful for the new Compute Cluster Instances. AWS already offers customers a
<a href="http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/global-solution-providers/oracle/">broad range of Oracle software</a> on EC2 ranging from Oracle Enterprise Linux to Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic server and you can download
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/cloud/index.html">pre-built AWS instances</a> directly from Oracle. Don't take my word for it, read about what joint Oracle/AWS customers like <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/harvard/">Harvard Medical School</a> are doing with Oracle software on AWS. But back to Oracle Grid Engine. Oracle Grid Engine software is a distributed resource management (DRM) system that manages the distribution of users' workloads to available compute resources. Some of the world's largest supercomputers, like the Sun Constellation System at the <a href="http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/resources/hpc/">Texas Advanced Computing Center</a> use Oracle Grid Engine to schedule jobs across more than 60,000 processing cores. You can now use the same software to schedule jobs across a 64 core AWS Cluster Compute Instance.
<p>
Of course, many customers won't use only AWS or only their own compute cluster. A natural evolution of grid to cloud computing is so-called Hybrid Clouds that combine resources across public and private clouds. Oracle Grid Engine already handles that too, enabling you to automatically provision additional resources from the Amazon EC2 service to process peak application workloads, reducing the need to provision datacenter capacity according to peak demand. This so-called <i>cloud bursting</i> feature of Oracle Grid Engine is not new, its just that you can now cloud burst onto a much more powerful AWS Compute Cluster Instance.
<p>
One of Oracle's partners who has been doing a lot of work with Oracle Grid Engine in the cloud is Univa UD. I had the opportunity to speak to Univa's
<a href="http://www.univaud.com/about/news/press_2010/07052010.php">new CEO, Gary Tyreman</a> today about how they are helping customers build private and hybrid clouds using Oracle Grid Engine running on top of
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/index.html">Oracle VM</a> and
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/index.html">Oracle Enterprise Linux.</a> Gary told me Univa has been beta testing the AWS Compute Cluster Instance for several months and that it has worked flawlessly with Oracle Grid Engine and Oracle Enterprise Linux. Gary also noted that they are working with a number of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) customers that need even more powerful virtual servers than the ones available on AWS today. We have several joint customers that are evaluating the new <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/sun-fire-x4800-server-077287.html">Sun Fire x4800</a> running Oracle VM as <i>supernodes</i> for running EDA applications in private clouds. To put it in perspective, a single x4800 running Oracle VM can support up to 64 cores and 1 TB of memory. That is as much CPU power and many times the memory of a full 8 node AWS Compute Cluster Instance in a single 5RU server! Now that is a powerful cloud computing platform.
<p>
If you want to hear more from Gary about what Univa is doing with some of their cloud computing customers, download his <a href="http://www.univaud.com/about/resources/exec-roundtable-video.php">Executive Roundtable</a> video. I'd love to hear from some additional customers who are using Oracle Grid Engine on the new AWS Compute Cluster Instances. Who knows, maybe in the future Amazon will even offer a Super Duper Quadruple Extra Large Cluster Compute Instance based on the a singe 64 core, 1 TB server like the Sun Fire x4800. Meanwhile, you can easily take advantage of both Compute Cluster Instances and the x4800 by building your own hybrid cloud with Oracle Grid Engine.
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_pasig_meetingOracle PASIG Meetingmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_pasig_meeting
Mon, 5 Jul 2010 13:02:01 +0000GeneralI had the pleasure of spending the day at the
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=113053&src=6882794&src=6882794&Act=6">Oracle's Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) meeting </a> today in beautiful Madrid, in advance of this week's
<a href="http://or2010.fecyt.es/publico/Home/index.aspx">Open Repositories</a> conference. Any mental images of a classic <i>librarian</i> should be cast aside as practitioners from many of the world's leading digital libaries came together to discuss preservation and archiving. For more information on the PASIG, visit the
<a href="http://sun-pasig.ning.com/">main PASIG web site.</a> Below are some of my notes from today's meeting.
<p>
Tom Cramer, Chief Technology Strategist and Associate Director, Digital Library Systems and Services, Stanford University, started off the morning. One of the interesting points Tom made was how Stanford seamlessly pulls data from five digital systems in the process of archiving student thesis papers. Starting with student and professor information from Stanford's
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/campus-solutions/index.html">Oracle Peoplesoft campus information system</a>, archive metadata is automatically populated and combined with thesis PDFs, a new library catalog data record is automatically created, and finally, PDFs and associated metadata are automatically crawled and published to the world via <a href="http://books.google.com">Google Books.</a>
<p>
Next, Oxford's Neil Jefferies took the discussion a bit deeper and talked about the changing nature of intellectual discourse. While Oxford's collection holds over 250 km shelf-miles of paper books, the library is increasingly working to archive more ephemeral university data sources including websites, social media, and linked data. A consistent theme discussed by Neil and many of the other speakers was the increasing focus on providing not only archive and preservation but also access to data.
<p>
On formally to the continent, Laurent DuPlouy and Olivier Rouchon from the French National Library presented on the
<a href="http://www.bnf.fr/en/professionals/preservation_spar/s.preservation_SPAR_presentation.html">SPAR Project</a> and CINES Collaboration. They were brave enough to show a live demo of their system, including use of a
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/tape-storage/029139.htm">StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System</a>.
<p>
Back to the UK, Brian Hole from
<a href="http://www.bl.uk/">The British Library</a> presented on the
<a href="http://www.life.ac.uk/">LIFE3 project </a>which aims to model the long term preservation lifecycle costs of digitized data. Brian's taking suggestions for improvements in LIFE4 and and I suggested he including in his model the
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/secure-backup-066578.html">Oracle Secure Backup Cloud module</a> which can securely backup databases to Amazon S3 cloud storage.
<p>
After a wonderful Spanish lunch the first panel session of the day started with discussions on Community and Tool Set collaborations.
<p>
<a href="http://duraspace.org">DuraSpace</a> CEO Sandy Payette presented on the Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering <a href="http://duraspace.org/duracloud.php">DuraCloud.</a>.
<p>
Richard Jones presented on the
<a href="http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/SWORD_discussion_paper">SWORD</a> project on repository interoperability. Read and comment on the <a href="http://sword2depositlifecycle.jiscpress.org/">SWORD whitepaper.</a>
<p>
Jan Reichelt, founder and director of
<a href="http://www.mendeley.com/research-papers/">Mendeley</a> reference management software used to organize, share, and discover academic research papers. Mendeley tracks over 28 million research papers including information on most read papers and authors.
<p>
David Tarrant of <a href="http://www.eprints.org/"> EPrints</a> discussed how EPrints software is used to create and manage repositories.
<p>
Finally, Bram van der Werf of
<a href="http://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/">Open Planets Foundation</a> described the Open Planets suite of tools for managing digital data.
<p>
After the panel presentation, we heard from a series of Oracle speakers.
The
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/content-management/index.html">Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g</a> is broadly applicable to preservation and archive, capable of archiving over
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/content-management/ecm-extreme-performance-wp-077977.pdf">179 million documents a day</a> as shown in a recent benchmark. Of course, many PASIG customers already use the
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/storage-software/031715.htm">Sun Storage Archive Manager</a> software along with
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/tape-storage/index.html">StorageTek modular library systems</a> and there were updates from Oracle speakers on all of products and more.
<p>
The final session included short presentations from a number of Oracle software partners in the archive and preservation space. I definitely learned a lot today about what some of the world's leading digital libraries are doing on the preservation and archive front, and hopefully it was a day well spent for all who attended. If you are not already a PASIG member, be sure to
<a href="http://sun-pasig.ning.com/main/authorization/signUp?">signup now</a>, for this growing Oracle community. https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/summer_reading_july_august_2010Summer Reading - July-August 2010 Oracle Magazinemarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/summer_reading_july_august_2010
Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:37:03 +0000GeneralOK, before any wisecrack comments, this is not my <i>only</i> summer reading, but one of my great finds since joining Oracle is definitely the
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/10-jul/index.html">Oracle Magazine.</a> In the July-August issue, a must read is the interview of
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/10-jul/o40interview.html">Oracle Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven</a> on the importance of open source and open standards. The cover feature on
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/10-jul/o40virtual.html">The Virtual Enterprise</a> also is a compelling article discussing how Oracle customer JP Morgan Chase is using Oracle virtualization technologies.
<p>
While Oracle has many virtualization technologies, one discussed by both articles is <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/index.html">Oracle VM</a>. When considered in combination with the new
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/sun-fire-x4800-server-077287.html">Sun Fire x4800 server</a>, Oracle VM is a great example of the benefits of Oracle's <i>Software. Hardware. Complete.</i> engineering philosophy. While there are alternative VM technologies in the market, Oracle VM is one of the few that can take full advantage of the capabilities of servers built using Intel's latest 7500 series x86 CPUs like the Sun Fire x4800. Oracle VM can take full advantage of all 64 x86 cores in the Sun Fire x4800 as well as all 1 TB of memory. If you are not using Oracle VM as your virtualization platform, you might want to ask your VM vendor when they will support a full 1 TB of memory and 64 CPU cores like Oracle VM does today (full <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/024974.htm">Oracle VM technical specs can be found here</a>).
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/x4800.jpg">
<p>
You can read all of this issue of Oracle Magazine <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/10-jul/index.html">online</a>, but I also recommend that you
<a href="http://oracle-sub.halldata.com/site/ORA000165OCland/init.do?&PK=OTNRHL">signup for your own complimentary subscription</a>. The paper copy is highly recommended for poolside or beach lounging, as well as for those 10 minute periods during takeoffs and landings.https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/a_petabyte_of_storage_isnA Petabyte of Storage Isn't What it Used to Bemarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/a_petabyte_of_storage_isn
Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:54:52 +0000GeneralJust a few years ago, few CIOs would have imagined managing a petabyte of storage in their data center. Those that did typically had a significant staff of storage administrators to manage the complex SAN infrastructure required. But in today's world where a 500 GB laptop drive fits in your shirt pocket and consumer 2 TB drives can be purchased at your favorite electronics store for about $100, the petabyte barrier is being crossed even by many mid size organizations. But as storage administrators know, a petabyte worth of disk drives doesn't equate to a petabyte of usable storage. Disk formatting and RAID partitioning can use up to 50% of your storage and user quotas meant to ensure a single user doesn't use up all of your storage downloading high definition video files can leave valuable unused storage inaccessible when you need it. As a result, many CIOs are surprised to learn just how little they actually can store on a petabyte of storage. Worse yet, software features like deduplication and compression, if even available, are sold as costly add-on options which require even more staff hours to administer. If you are wondering how to deal with the ever increasing cost and complexity of delivering petabyte class enterprise storage infrastructure, you need look no further than Oracle's
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/index.html">Sun Unified Storage</a>.
<p>
Starting with the entry level
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/unified-storage/031742.htm">Sun Storage 7110</a>, Sun Unified Storage scales up to 576 TB of raw capacity with the newly upgraded
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/unified-storage/031680.htm">Sun Storage 7410</a>. However, unlike other storage offerings that deliver much less usable storage than their raw capacity, Oracle's unified storage offerings often delivery <i>more</i> storage than their raw capacity. Lets take a look at how that's done.
<p>
For starters, Oracle's unified storage products are all based on the
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/storage-software/031857.htm">ZFS file system</a> so you get ZFS's powerful data compression built in at no additional cost. ZFS data compression not only saves valuable storage space, it can actually <i>speed up</i> applications like the MySQL database. Listen to what Oracle customer
<a href="http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/tag/zfs/">Don MacAskill</a> from
<a href="http://www.smugmug.com">online photo site SmugMug</a> had to say about ZFS data compression and MySQL. Full disclaimer, I'm a happy paying customer of SmugMug storing about 20,000 pictures on the site.
<p>
Of course, Oracle's unified storage offers a lot more ways to save storage than simple data compression. While other storage vendors require you to purchase costly software upgrades, often from 3rd party firms, to enable data deduplication, all of Oracle's unified storage servers now offer deduplication built in. So if I upload 10 copies of the same picture to SmugMug they only need to store it once (actually, SmugMug keeps four copies of every unique picture I upload, one of the best availability and preservation policies of any photo site). Or if I'm running 10 copies of the same Oracle VM virtual machine image, deduplication can save me from storing duplicate data.
<p>
While SmugMug doesn't put any quotas on how many photos I can upload and store, most enterprise environments enforce user quotas to ensure a single user doesn't use up more storage than expected. Quotas have been around for many years. If you have a 100 TB filesystem, you can allocate 100 users a 1 TB quota and ensure you never run out of space. However, since many users will never use even a fraction of their quota, quotas can actually <i>waste</i> space. Enter so-called "lightweight" quotas. A lightweight quota scheme only allocates space to a user when they require it, allowing you, for instance, to share a 100 TB filesystem with 200 users, each with a 1 TB quota. This of course requires some additional active management as you approach your filesystem capacity to move users to new filesystems as you approach capacity. However, even most so-called lightweight quote systems don't reclaim space when a user deletes files. So if you have 100 users store 1 TB each of data, then they each delete half a TB, the quota system will still show 100 TB allocated. Oracle's unified storage is one of the only systems to implement truly lightweight quote systems. If a user stores 1 TB of data, then deletes half of it, the remaining 500 GB becomes available for other users.
<p>
The combination of data compression, data deduplication, and lightweight quotas all help you stretch more value out of a petabyte of data. Of course, those are only some of the ways that Oracle's unified storage helps you
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/unified-storage/index.html">simplify your storage</a>.
<p>
A petabyte of storage just isn't what it used to be. https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/highlights_of_oracle_s_nextHighlights of Oracle's Next Generation x86 Systems Launchmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/highlights_of_oracle_s_next
Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:59:15 +0000GeneralTo me, the highlight of today's
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/x86-launch-081548.html">x86 Systems Launch</a> was not any individual server, but the focus on engineering complete systems of x86 clusters for Oracle and non Oracle workloads. The focus on engineering of complete systems, coupled with other trends in system architecture, will have profound changes on the way systems vendors design and customers purchase systems in the coming decade. Let me explain.
<p>
One of my favorite automobile companies, BMW, ran an advertising campaign a while back promoting the ability to configure to order your BMW from "a million possible combinations, give or take a nappa leather color option or two". That is actually great when you are selling cars, because at any given time one car is only being driven on one road by one driver, and there are many different types of drivers and roads. For many years, a similar design philosophy has been followed by x86 server vendors. The leading x86 vendors today offer a nearly endless combination of server form factors and options: 1 socket, 2 socket, 4 socket, 8 socket; rack mount, tower, blade; different I/O and memory capacities; and on an on. At one time, that made sense, as each server was typically purchased for a dedicated application and the endless options allowed an IT purchaser to configure and pay for only the features they needed. But unlike cars, the vast majority of x86 servers being purchased today are not serving a single user or running a single application.
<p>
With the widespread server consolidation enabled by virtualization technologies and the ever increasing power of multi-core CPUs, the vast majority of an organization's x86 compute demands can today be met with clusters made of up a single x86 server type. Cloud Computing providers like
<a href="http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/global-solution-providers/oracle/">Amazon EC2</a> have recognized this for years as have High Performance Computing customers like
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvA13qL9tkg&feature=player_embedded">Sandia National Labs</a>. So why have system vendors continued to insist on gratuitously pumping out more and more x86 server models in every shape, size, and color? Well, if all you have to engineer is individual servers, then I guess you get creative. At Oracle, however, our x86 engineers have been busy designing complete x86 clusters to run Oracle and non Oracle workloads, and that has led to some of the design decisions exposed in <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/x86-launch-081548.html">today's launch.</a>
<p>
If you had to build an x86 cluster to handle the broadest possible set of workloads, I'd definitely use the new
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/sun-fire-x4800-server-077287.html">Sun Fire x4800</a>. Powered by up to eight Intel Xeon 7500 series processors, one terabyte of memory, and eight hot swappable PCIe ExpressModules, this is the most powerful, expandable, and reliable of Oracle’s x86-based servers. Given that the PCIe Express Module standard was first announced by the PCI standards body in 2005, its amazing that five years later we don't see more vendors using this standard to provide hot swappable I/O cards for their servers. Sun first introduced PCIe ExpressModules in our Sun Blade family of blade servers several years ago and the Sun Fire x4800 now continues their use. If your systems vendor isn't using the PCIe Express Module standard for hot swap I/O and only offering proprietary hot-swap solutions, or worse yet, no hot-sway I/O cards, you might want to point them to the
<a href="http://www.pcisig.com/news_room/news/press_releases_archive/2005_04_11">2005 Announcement</a> from the PCI SIG. Of course, if you are designing servers intended to be used as single standalone systems instead of in clusters, then perhaps a choice of bezel color is a more important option.
<p>
While I don't have time to discuss all of today's product introductions, one more that I did want to discuss is the new
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/networking/ethernet/sun-network-10gbe-switch-72p-079340.html">Sun Network 10GbE Switch 72p</a>. Offering 72 10GbE ports in a single 1RU chassis, this switch is definitely designed for building clusters not single servers. While everyone seems to be hawking 10GbE switches these days, most so called "top of rack" switches only support 24 or 48 ports in a 1RU form factor. To replicate the full non-blocking fabric provided by the Sun Network 10GbE Switch 72p would require nine 24 port switches or five 48 port switches, up to 54 additional cables, 1/5 of a rack more space, and significantly more power. When used in conjunction with Oracle's
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/networking/ethernet/058289.html">
Sun Blade 6000 24p 10GbE NEM</a>, one can easily build non-blocking fabrics of up to 160 nodes or clusters of up to 720 nodes with oversubscription.
<p>
So hopefully that gives you a few ideas for building your next x86 cluster. With a lot of vendors, the ideas would stop after the hardware. On the software front, products like <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/application-server/index.html">Oracle Weblogic 11g Application Server</a> and
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/mysql/index.html">MySQL Enterprise</a> need no introduction and they require no modification to run on 10GbE clusters. But lets say you are are upgrading an older 2-socket, dual core x86 server to a new 2-socket, six core Sun Fire X4170 M2 Server. Do you really need to upgrade to 10GbE network or will your application run just fine on your existing 1GbE network? For starters, everything else being equal, if your old server ran a single application, with 3x as many cores, your new server, with sufficient memory and I/O, should be able to run at least 3 applications using
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/index.html">Oracle VM</a> virtualization software. Of course, one of the benefits of Oracle VM is not only server consolidation, but more flexible management. Even if your core applications run fine with 1 GbE, you could gain significant performance benefits with 10 GbE when you needed to move VMs off the server for planned maintenance, for load balancing, or unplanned server failures (using Oracle VM HA functionality).
<p>
Unlike a BMW, which is perhaps best enjoyed by itself on a deserted mountain road, Oracle's new x86 servers are designed to be used together in clusters, along with our high performance 10 GbE and
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/networking/infiniband/032354.htm">InfiniBand switches</a>, Oracle storage, and Oracle software. Engineered together from application to disk.
<p>
Software. Hardware. Complete.
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/a_brilliant_argument_for_zfsA Brilliant Argument for ZFS in Cloud Storage Environmentsmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/a_brilliant_argument_for_zfs
Tue, 18 May 2010 13:17:03 +0000GeneralWhen it comes to analyzing complex systems, Henry Newman is one of the most brilliant people I know. I loved his
<a href="http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/features/article.php/3882346/Cloud-Storage-Will-Be-Limited-By-Drive-Reliability-Bandwidth.htm">analysis of cloud storage</a> which appeared in today's
<a href="http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/">Enterprise Storage Forum</a> article titled
<a href="http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/features/article.php/3882346/Cloud-Storage-Will-Be-Limited-By-Drive-Reliability-Bandwidth.htm">Cloud Storage Will Be Limited By Drive Reliability, Bandwidth</a>. In the article, Henry clearly explains the statistics of why a multi-petabyte cloud storage environment which relies only on data replication across two sites to protect your data is simply not feasible. On average, for multi-petabyte storage clouds, the bandwidth needed to recover failed drives across a wide area network link simply doesn't scale to any reasonable network bandwidth that can be obtained today.
<p>
Without actually mentioning <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/storage-software/031857.htm">ZFS</a>, Henry's analysis points out exactly why the innovative approach of ZFS to data integrity is required in multi-petabyte storage clouds. The key feature of ZFS enabling data integrity is the 256-bit checksum that protects your data. This checksum allows the ZFS self-healing feature to automatically repair corrupted data. ZFS is not new, it was introduced years ago with Solaris 10 and many many petabytes of mission critical data are protected today by ZFS at thousands of companies around the world. When ZFS was first advertised as a <i>future-proof file system</i>, most people were not even dreaming about clouds, but the ZFS designers were certainly thinking about multi-petabyte file systems, that is why they created ZFS with mind-boggling 128-bit scalability.
<p>
So thank you Henry for pointing out the quite real limitations of simple geographic replication in large cloud storage environments. If you don't have time to read Henry's brilliant analysis, just ask your cloud storage provider or your own internal IT staff if they are protecting your storage with ZFS. If they ask why, tell them to go ask Henry Newman about it. https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/some_favorite_cloud_computing_linksSome Favorite Cloud Computing Linksmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/some_favorite_cloud_computing_links
Tue, 4 May 2010 07:17:55 +0000General<a href="http://www.mitre.org/work/info_tech/cloud_computing/">Ahead in the Clouds</a> is a great Q&A series by
<a href="http://www.mitre.org/work/index.html">MITRE</a>, a US government federally funded research and development center (FFRDC). If you work for the government or a government contractor, definitely worth the read, heck, even if you don't, worth reading.
<p>
Of course, I highly recommend the <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/cloud/index.htm">Oracle + Sun Cloud Strategy Webcast</a>. Oracle is doing so many things related to cloud computing its hard to highlight just one, but this webcast does a good job of introducing you to many of Oracle's offerings.
<p>
Marten Mickos' <a href="http://twitter.com/martenmickos">twitter page</a> (from which I borrowed some of these links). As CEO of MySQL, Marten helped turn it into one of the most successful open source companies. These days, Oracle is busy helping customers use MySQL in the cloud, and Marten is over working as CEO at cloud startup
<a href="http://www.eucalyptus.com/">Eucalyptus</a> which I am sure he will help make equally successful.
<p>
Co-founded by another ex Sun employee, Manuel Jaffrin's <a href="http://www.getapp.com/">GetApp.com</a> is a virtual yellow pages for cloud apps, cataloging over 2900 business tools and apps along with user reviews and other helpful information. Before you start writing your own cloud app, its definitely worth a visit to GetApp to see whats already available. As you might expect, GetApp is completely hosted <i>in the cloud</i>, Manuel proudly claims the only computer he owns is his Mac laptop.
<p>
There is no shortage of ex Sun folks in the cloud business, Peder Ulander is now Chief Marketing Officer over at <a href="http://cloud.com">Cloud.com</a>, another open source cloud platform.
<p>
And yes, while a lot of cloud computing is still marketing, there is a tremendous amount of real work going on in public and private clouds, like NASA's
<a href="http://nebula.nasa.gov/">NEBULA Cloud Computing Platform</a>. Its worth noting that NASA's cloud
<a href="http://nebula.nasa.gov/services/">uses a number of Oracle product</a> including the Lustre file system and MySQL database.
<p>
Please feel free to comment with your own favorite cloud links. https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_hpc_consortium_registration_andOracle HPC Consortium Registration and Agendamarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_hpc_consortium_registration_and
Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:50:52 +0000GeneralThe <a href="http://www.oracle-event.com/hpc/agenda.asp">registration and agenda</a> for next month's Oracle HPC Consortium are now posted online. If you are attending the
<a href="http://www.supercomp.de/isc10/">ISC10</a> supercomputer show in Hamburg, be sure to arrive a few days early for this exclusive opportunity to be part of the high performance computing community. Network, learn and share ideas for developing and using Oracle’s Sun compute-intensive and data-intensive technologies to achieve business and research objectives.
<p>
At the event, you will hear how Oracle Technical Computing provides customers with complete systems: from applications to archival storage, with higher quality and lower TCO. This enables faster time to solution and faster time to market for your business. Using technology proven on some of the world's fastest supercomputers, Oracle Technical Computing addresses the needs of customers in a wide range of industries, from Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Financial Services and Life Sciences, consolidating Compute with Data Intensive processing across the entire Enterprise.
<p>
<a href="http://www.oracle-event.com/hpc/agenda.asp">Register today</a> as spaces are
limited and attendance at the HPC Consortium will be invite-only and subject to confirmation.https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_hpc_consortiumOracle HPC Consortiummarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_hpc_consortium
Fri, 9 Apr 2010 08:09:18 +0000GeneralSave the date May 29-30, 2010 for the
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/dm/10q4field/47810_ev_hpc_consortium_hamburg_may29.html">Oracle HPC Consortium</a>, in beautiful Hamburg, Germany, immediately prior to <a href="http://www.supercomp.de/isc10/">ISC10</a>, the International Supercomputer Conference.
</p>
Join us on May 29 –30, 2010 at the Le Royal Meridien in Hamburg, Germany for the first HPC Consortium to showcase the benefits of the Oracle and Sun Oracle combination.
<p>
As in previous years, the Consortium's mission is to provide the high performance computing community with leadership and a forum for information exchange. Network, learn, and share ideas for developing and using Oracle’s Sun compute-intensive and data-intensive technologies to achieve business and research objectives.
<p>
Listen to practical applications from the
<a href="http://bmworacleracing.com/">BMW Oracle Racing</a> team speaker and see how this team won back the America’s Cup using high performance computing as one of their strategies.
<p>
You will receive details on how to register later this month. Please note that space is limited and attendance at the HPC Consortium will be invite-only and subject to confirmation. We hope you plan to join us in May.https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/red_sky_updateRed Sky & Red Mesa Updatemarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/red_sky_update
Thu, 8 Apr 2010 11:16:43 +0000GeneralThe National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia are already using the Red Sky and Red Mesa supercomputers to achieve amazing scientific results. Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at the formal ribbon cutting and grand opening of the <a href="http://www.top500.org/system/10188">Red Sky</a> supercomputer at <a href="http://www.sandia.gov/">Sandia National Laboratories</a> in New Mexico. Several months ago I posted a
<a href="http://blogs.sun.com/marchamilton/entry/building_red_sky">time-lapse video</a> on the building of Red Sky. Now in production, Sandia's Red Sky supercomputer, along with the co-located Red Mesa system of the
<a href="http://www.nrel.gov/">National Renewable Energy Laboratory</a> are hard at work solving some of the nation's most difficult energy challenges. The video below gives an update on some of the early research results accomplished on Red Sky and Red Mesa, and I think you will find the work quite amazing. My congratulations go out to the Sandia and NREL teams for their accomplishments and for inspiring all of us to think of new ways to address some of our planet's most challenging problems.
<p>
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vvA13qL9tkg&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vvA13qL9tkg&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_data_mining_technologyOracle Data Mining Technologymarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_data_mining_technology
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:18:00 +0000GeneralOne of my kids asked me yesterday why I hadn't updated my blog for almost a month, and while its no excuse, the last 30 days have been filled with nonstop learning about Oracle's products, meeting with customers, and just a bit of imagining the possibilities. One of the Oracle technologies I've spent a lot of time thinking about is
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/odm/">Oracle Data Mining (ODM)</a>. In an odd twist of fate, both ODM and Sun can trace some of their lineage to the 1980's supercomputer company
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines">Thinking Machines</a>.
<p>
When Thinking Machines went bankrupt in 1994, the hardware assets of the company and many of the employees were acquired by Sun Microsystems. What remained of Thinking Machines reformed as a data mining software company and developed the Darwin data mining toolkit. Then in 1999, the data mining business was purchased by Oracle and eventually became ODM.
<p>
ODM provides a broad suite of data mining techniques and algorithms to solve
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/odm/odm_techniques_algorithms.html">many types of business problems.</a> including clssificaiton, regression, attribute importance, association, and feature extraction. There are of course many different data mining software packages in existence that could, for instance, determine the association between frequency of an employee's new blog entries and their number of days traveling in a month. Most of those tools would require you to extract records from a database, input them into the data mining package, run the analysis, and eventually probably store the results back into the database. Therein lies one of the unique advantages of ODM. Much of the data that large enterprises want to mine already exists in a database, so why not put the data mining algorithms into the database too, then you wouldn't have to move the data in order to mine it. That is exactly what Oracle did about a decade ago with ODM, and its been evolving ever since.
<p>
Today, perhaps the ultimate data mining platform is Oracle's
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/exadata/index.htm">Exadata Database Machine.</a> Much has been written about Exadata's smart flash cache, its hybrid columnar compression, and its fully redundant QDR InfiniBand networking which, combined, make Exadata both a great data warehouse and a great OLTP platform. Add ODM, and Exadata becomes a great platform for such data mining applications as anomaly analysis for fraud analysis, clustering analysis for life sciences drug discovery, or association analysis for product bundling or in-store placement analysis.
<p>
You won't need a PhD in statistics to use ODM, but I would recommend the book
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Super-Crunchers-Thinking-Numbers-Smart/dp/0553805401">Super Crunchers</a> to get you started on imagining the possibilities.
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_hpc_consortium_isc10Oracle HPC Consortium & ISC10marchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_hpc_consortium_isc10
Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:36:57 +0000GeneralSeveral people sent me email after my post yesterday on Lustre asking if Oracle was going to continue participating in the
<a href="http://www.supercomp.de/isc10/">International Supercomputer Conference</a> as well as the highly popular HPC Consortium seminar prior to the conference. I'm happy to say the answers are yes and yes.
<p>
The Oracle events team has already been working with the ISC team and if you check the
<a href="http://www.supercomp.de/isc10/Sponsors/ISC-10-Sponsors">ISC Sponsors</a> page you can see it has even been updated with the new Sun Oracle logo.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/Sun.gif">
<p>
One note, the ISC10 conference will be held two weeks earlier than the traditional mid-June date, and thus the HPC Consortium is also moving to May 29th & 30th. So save the date and stay tuned for the registration site which will be coming soon.
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/lustre_file_system_updateLustre File System Updatemarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/lustre_file_system_update
Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:16:37 +0000General<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/Lustre-Logo2.png">
<p>
I realize there is a lot of interest regarding the future of
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/storage-software/031855.htm">Lustre at Oracle</a>. Since change in control, Oracle and Sun leaders are working together closely to build on our success with Lustre and the Open Storage product line and deliver increasingly better HPC storage solutions to our customers.
<p>
I'm pleased to say with confidence that Oracle will continue to invest in Lustre. From engineering to sales to deployment and support, it's the same great people working together to make Lustre a success at Oracle.
<p>
Oracle will honor all Lustre support commitments and allow customers to renew their support contracts when the time comes. We value our long-standing customers and look forward to continuing good relationships.
<p>
The <a href="http://lug2010.org/">Lustre User Group 2010</a>, our 8th annual seminar, will continue as planned. I look forward to seeing many long standing users this spring and introducing you to the growing Lustre community at Oracle.
<p>
I realize you probably have more questions and we will be able to answer them soon. I promise that we'll communicate a more detailed plan for Lustre by the end of March 2010. You can also sign up for the <a href="http://wiki.lustre.org/index.php/Lustre_Mailing_Lists">Lustre-Announce</a> mailing list to receive the latest Lustre announcements from Oracle.
<p>
Marc Hamilton
<p>
Vice President, HPC Sales Support
<p>
Oracle Global Technology Business Unit
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/0001000_years_and_counting00010000 Years and Countingmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/0001000_years_and_counting
Sun, 17 Jan 2010 07:14:38 +0000GeneralI joined Sun 00010000 years ago today (16 for my friends who aren't conversant in binary). It seems like just yesterday. January 17, 1994. I can't help but to reminiscent a bit.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/la.jpg">
<p>
<li> I lived in LA then and still do today. I somehow managed to spend more than 730 nights not in LA, at least according to my Starwood frequent guest statement, and that only dates to 1999. More on those two years later.
<li> January 17, 1994 was Martin Luther King Day, a Sun holiday, so my first official day at work I took the day off. Little did I know how many times I would pay back that first day.
<li> January 17, 2010 is a Sunday, and I'm working, starting off yet another round the world business trip
<li> The Internet did exist in 1994, just not many people used it, there were about <a href="http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/internet/growth.html">15,000 registered host names</a> in January 1994
<li> If you wanted to browse the web in January 1994, you couldn't use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or even Netscape. Netscape wouldn't be
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape">started until April of that year</a>. The majority of the people using the Web were using the early
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)">Mosaic browser</a>.
<li> One of the things that brought me to Sun was a demonstration of an early version of a project code-named <a href="http://java.sun.com/features/1998/05/birthday.html">WebRunner</a> which was a new web browser based on a new language which would become the Java language. The Java technology was not announced until some 16 months later, in May 1995.
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_E._Schmidt">Eric Schmidt</a> worked at Sun. Yahoo wouldn't be started for <a href="http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html">another month</a>. It would be more than four years before Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim <a href="http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html">wrote a $100,000 check</a> to an entity that wouldn't exist for another month, Google.
<li> I remember saying hi to Eric at a few Sun events. I've been lucky enough to spend countless hours with Andy since he returned to Sun in February of 2004 and spent much of his time focusing on HPC.
<li>InfiniBand networking wouldn't be invented for <a href="http://blog.infinibandta.org/2009/11/05/ibta-to-celebrate-10-year-anniversary-at-sc%E2%80%9909/">another six years</a>, meanwhile, most <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet">Ethernet networks</a> ran at 10Mbit/sec speeds, or 1000 times slower than today's
<a href="http://www.sun.com/products/networking/ethernet/10gigethernet/index.xml">10Gbit/sec networks.</a>
<li> Sun was the exclusive computer supplier to the 1994 Soccer World Cup held at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles. The Sun powered world cup web site became the most viewed web site in the world. I was a systems engineering manager at Sun in Los Angeles at the time and my team helped ensure the world cup web site operated smoothly through the event.
<li> Sun Canada is the Official Computer Network Server Supplier to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. I was Vice President of North America Systems Sales when we signed the deal, so I'll take a bit of credit, although it really goes to the Sun Canada team.
<li> Have I really spent more than two years in hotel rooms? What countries where those in? Ones I easily remember include Canada, Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, China, Japan, UK, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Israel, and Belgium. That doesn't include vacations or a few that for various reasons will go unnamed.
<li> Solaris 2.3 had just been released (November 1993) and was helping to propel the SPARCcenter 2000, with up to 20 SuperSPARC CPUs, as one of the most powerful Oracle database servers of the day.
<li> Countless Sun tee-shirts, polo shirts, dress shirts, coffee cups, backpacks, boxer shorts (don't sell storage short), jackets (my multiple leather Java jackets all quickly found their way to customers but I am keeping a 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics jacket), and the one give-away my wife does use, the 2001 SunRise
Nambé platter.
<li> The one Sun event my wife will always remember, SunRise Paris, costume ball at Versailles
<li> The sigh of relief when Joe Roebuck didn't join Elton John in a piano duet at SunRise in Hawaii
<li> My daughter had not yet turned 3. My son wouldn't be born for several months. My wife, what can I say about someone who has put up with me being gone one eighth of the last sixteen years.
<li>Change is good but <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuxb24szuwQ">I'll never do this again</a>
<li>I will do more of these, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNW9cYY4tqc">Red Sky</a>, although <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qyCH2G8epo">this one</a> is perhaps one of a kind.
<p>
What can I say. Its been an awesome ride. I did some fun things before Sun. I'm looking forward to some even more amazing things the next 16 years. Another 16 years from now, I still will be a few years shy of <a href="http://www.socialsecurity.gov/retire2/agereduction.htm">full retirement age</a>. So check back on January 17, 2026 and see what I've been up to.
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/a_new_decade_for_cloudA New Decade For Cloud Computing?marchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/a_new_decade_for_cloud
Wed, 6 Jan 2010 09:54:42 +0000GeneralWhenever a new year or a especially a new decade passes, you find people trying to make predictions of what hot new technology trends will come to pass. Of course, innovation cycles don't always follow calendar years. However, as the first few days of 2010 have come to show, I think it is safe to say we will see an increase in the use of so called <a href="http://www.sun.com/cloud">cloud computing</a>.
<p>
No, Sun did not announce any new Cloud Computing products since the start of the year, but companies as diverse as GM OnStar with it's new
<a href="http://onstarmobiledemo.com/">Volt app</a> to Google with Nexus One did, with many more new announcements no doubt planned for the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES). For while many consumers may think of Google's
<a href="http://www.google.com/phone">Nexus One</a> as a smartphone, and no matter how you compare it to the iPhone, one thing is for sure, both the Nexus One and the Chevy Volt will drive increased use of Cloud Computing, not only Google's own cloud, but many other clouds as well hosting some of the 1000's of <a href="http://www.android.com/market/">Android apps</a>.
<p>
So if you are one of the lucky ones to have gotten your hands on a Nexus One already, or are a die-hard iPhone user, you no doubt know to go to the
<a href="http://www.android.com/market/">Android Market</a> or iTunes to find your apps. That's great for consumers, but where do you go if you are in the market for an enterprise application that runs on the cloud? A Google search for <i>CRM Software</i> returns millions of entries and while I'm sure any IT director thinking of cloud based CRM would no doubt first go to Oracle's
<a href="http://www.Oracle.com/CRMonDemand">CRMonDemand</a> site, even a more specific search for something like <i>farm management software</i> returns over two million results. Is there an Android Market equivalent for enterprise cloud software?
<p>
Sensing a business opportunity, a
<a href="http://www.sun.com/startupessentials/">Sun Startup Essentials</a> community member has created
<a href="http://www.getapp.com/">GetApp.com</a>. Quietly launched in December, GetApp is a B2B portal focused on enterprise cloud applications and already features over 2200 cloud-ready software applications in 300 categories, including SaaS offerings, cloud images, and virtual appliances. GetApp's objective is pretty simple, help enterprise buyers find cloud applications that fit their needs and generating qualified sales leads for application providers.
<p>
Full disclosure, I have no financial interest or other association in GetApp other than the fact that their co-founder, Manuel Jaffrin, used to work for me. I talked to Manuel over the holidays and he shared with me a bit on how their site was doing. First, as you might expect, their site runs totally on the cloud, GetApp doesn't own a single physical server and has zero IT capex expense. The site itself is a showcase for many of the promoted apps. For instance, GetApp uses
<a href="http://www.getapp.com/listing/kampyle-for-websites">Kampyle Feedback Analytics</a> to collect, analyze, and manage feedback from customers who visit the site.
<p>
So if you didn't get that shiny new smartphone you wanted for the holidays, don't worry, there will be even better ones launched soon. As for a Chevy Volt, I'm afraid I can't help you there, my local dealer already has a long list of deposits each of which could buy you an unlocked Nexus One and an iPhone. On the other hand, if your not just using cloud computing but are a large enterprise or service provider building your own cloud, drop me a note, my team happens do know just a thing or two about building large mission critical data centers, be they for HPC or cloud data centers. https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/weekends_are_for_runningWeekends Are For Runningmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/weekends_are_for_running
Sun, 3 Jan 2010 21:48:40 +0000GeneralEasy 10 mile run along the beach today.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/beach.jpg">
Ran up the hill to get this view yesterday.https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/a_decade_of_wonderA Decade of Wondermarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/a_decade_of_wonder
Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:48:21 +0000General<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/ranger.jpg">
<p>
I told a friend of mine yesterday that I was taking the holidays off from blogging but couldn't resist an end-of-year blog.
<p>
Anyone in IT a decade ago surely remembers the attention paid to the passing of "Y2K". One Sun employee even
<a href="http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-applications-internet-audio/6775222-1.html">wrote a song about it</a>. And on the scientific side of computing, Sandia National Labs was celebrating their recent #1 entry in the
Top500 list with the famed <a href="http://www.top500.org/list/1999/11/">ASCI Red</a> supercomputer, reaching a whopping 2.3 TF using 9632 processors.
<p>
But as I told my friend, I've been spending the holiday break training for the upcoming LA Marathon and catching up on my holiday reading, courtesy of my wife and two kids. So no surprise, one of the books
I read was
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307266303/">Born to Run</a>. I have to thank Borje for recommending this book to me last month, but it wasn't until I gave it as a gift to my son, a recent convert to cross-country running, that I took the time to read it myself. Thanks Borje and Evan.
<p>
Of course the passing of a decade can't go without some nostalgia, so thanks to my wife I went back several decades to the Apollo program and read
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Men-Epic-Story-First/dp/B002VPE85K/">Rocket Men</a>. Definitely brought back memories of my days at TRW in the 1980's. As a new hire at TRW, you were indoctrinated into the company's history in the Apollo program, having built the world's first throttable rocket engine used as the lunar lander decent engine. Our new hire film also showed scene after scene of earlier failed rocket launches, reminders of what could happen when things went wrong. While Rocket Men did not discuss it, one of my favorite tidbits of Apollo program history was the role of the TRW-built backup navigation system, a so-called
<a href="http://klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/Failure_Reports/apollo_13/apollo_13_gnc_challenges.pdf"> strap down inertial navigation system</a>, in safely bringing back the Apollo 13 spacecraft after its near-devestating accident damaged the primary navigation system and forced the craft to limp-home on minimal power. I guess that strap-down system was the world's first <i>green</i> navigation system.
<p>
Last but not least in my holiday reading, a step back to an even earlier day in science,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Age-Wonder-Romantic-Generation-Discovered/dp/0375422226">The Age of Wonder</a>, when science and art came together in wonderful ways.
<p>
So what will the coming decade bring?
As we close this decade, Sandia is still the
<a href="http://www.top500.org/list/2009/11">Top10 of the Top500 list</a>, this time with a Sun Constellation System, aptly named <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNW9cYY4tqc">Red Sky</a> (and also one of my most frequently read blog entries for 2009). The Red Sky system, at 423.9 TF, is about 185 times more powerful than the decade-earlier ASCI Red system and in fact it would take only about six Sun Constellation System blades, about 1/8th of a standard 19" computer rack on Red Sky, to equal the total compute power of ASCI Red. While we don't know who will be at the top of the list in 2019, we do expect it won't be a TeraFlop or even at PetaFlop system but in fact an ExaFlop system.
<p>
Another topic sure to be top of mind in the coming decade is cloud computing. At the hardware level, many of the architectural concepts of cloud computing were actually first developed in the world of HPC and Top500 system.
Quick, without thinking too much, tell me if the picture at the top of this blog is of a leading cloud computing data center or a leading HPC data center?
If you recognized the picture as the TACC Ranger system (the #9 entry in the latest Top500 list, and like Sandia's Red Sky, also a Sun Constellation System), you'd be correct. But with 1000's of identical servers connected with a high performance network and multi-petabyte global file system, it also makes a perfect cloud data center. As our
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/sun/index.htm">soon to be new</a> CEO <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmrxN3GWHpM">likes to point out in interviews</a>, the basic hardware concepts of cloud computing, a server connected to the Internet, are not new. In fact, Oracle was one of the pioneers in cloud computing with their earlier
<a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_oracle/">Network Computer</a> division. But what IT topic wouldn't be complete without a
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c761kxpQgms">Bruce Kerr song</a>.
<p>
Over the next decade, the computing industry will continue to be challenged to build larger and faster computers. But by and large, the hardware paths to the ExaScale systems of 2019 are well on their way to being designed at semiconductor companies around the world. Many of the greatest computing challenges of the coming decade are likely to be software challenges. For while the peak computing power of microprocessors, servers, and in fact entire HPC or Cloud data centers continues to grow according to Moore's law, getting software to scale is increasingly the greater challenge. Solving those challenges will require ever closer cooperation between hardware architects and software architects. Those in the industry who simplify the coupling of software with hardware are likely to be winners in both HPC and Cloud Computing. I really look forward to blogging about how we solved those challenges in 2019.
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/lustre_user_group_2010Lustre User Group 2010marchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/lustre_user_group_2010
Tue, 1 Dec 2009 06:41:00 +0000GeneralHaving barely dried out my cloths from last month's SC09 conference in rainy Portland, its time to start thinking ahead to Spring sunshine and the
<a href="http://lug2010.org/">2010 Lustre User Group</a> meeting in beautiful Monterey Bay. To ensure the conference remains conversational and interactive, registration for this event will be limited to 150 people. We are processing
<a href="http://lug2010.org/">reservations</a> on a first come first served basis, and note that LUG 2009 sold out.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/lug08_600_logo.png">
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/building_red_skyBuilding Red Skymarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/building_red_sky
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:33:19 +0000GeneralToday,
<a href="http://www.top500.org/system/10188">Red Sky,</a> Sandia's Sun Constellation Supercomputer was announced as the 10th fastest supercomputer on the <a href="http://www.top500.org">Top500 list</a>, with a sustained performance of 429.9 TFlops. In the time-lapse video below, you can watch the building of Red Sky at Sandia National Laboratories National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Red Sky uses Sun's new
<a href="http://www.sun.com/servers/cooling/">5600 Cooling Door System</a> to achieve new levels of energy efficiency for a system of this size. By Sandia's own calculations, besides energy efficiency, the cooling door system saves over 5 million gallons a year of water compared to traditional air-cooled systems. Now that is green IT!
<p>
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mNW9cYY4tqc&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mNW9cYY4tqc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/sun_constellation_system_takes_3Sun Constellation System Takes 3 of Top 5 Nehalem Spots on Top500marchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/sun_constellation_system_takes_3
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:43:20 +0000GeneralThe latest
<a href=
"http://www.top500.org/list/2009/11/100">Top500</a> list was published today and three of the top five supercomputers based on Intel Nehalem CPUs were Sun Constellation Systems.
<p>
<a href="http://www.top500.org/site/3121">Sandia National Labs Red Sky supercomputer</a> becomes a new system on the Top 10, entering the list at number 10 and edging out last June's number 10 entry the
<a href="http://www.top500.org/site/649">Juelich Juropa supercomputer</a> which moves to 13th position on the Top500. <a href="http://www.top500.org/site/961">KISTI's Tachyonll supercomputer</a> enters the Top500 list at position 14. Quite amazing for its staying power on the Top500 and testimony to the
<a href="http://www.top500.org/site/1739">TACC's Ranger supercomputer</a>, which first appeared on the Top500 list in June 2008 at position 5 finds itself at postion 9 on the current Top500 list.
<p>
Other Sun entries in the Top100 included TiTech's TSUBAME system at position 56, and talk about staying power, TSUBAME entered the Top500 in June 2006 at position 7. CLUMEQ enters the list at position 63, and with an entire empty floor of their unique silo data center available for expansion, CLUMEQ is one site Top500 watchers should keep close watch on in the future. USC, despite losing to Stanford in US College Football this weekend, managed position 71, barely ahead of Clemson at position 79. Clemson CTO Jim Pepin won't comment on if he has a personal goal to overtake his longtime previous employer USC on the Top500 list, but one thing is for sure, on a global basis, the Top500 list has for many years created a competitive spirit among commercial, university, and government supercomputer sites and no doubt done a fare amount through that competition to advance the state of the art.
<p>
While Sun Constellation Systems have a much briefer history on the Top500 than many other vendors' systems, we are proud to have more than doubled the number of Sun systems on the current list, including an amazing 3 of the top 5 Intel Nehalem based systems. https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/meet_colossusIntroducing Colossusmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/meet_colossus
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:22:54 +0000General<a href="http://www.clumeq.mcgill.ca/
">CLUMEQ</a> recently unveiled Colossus, the largest Sun Constellation System supercomputer in Canada. The video below talks about the building of Colossus, some of the research planned using the new system, and why it is not only the fastest but one of the greenest and most energy efficient supercomputers in Canada.
<p>
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https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/sun_sc09_hpc_consortium_customerSun SC09 HPC Consortium Customer Runmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/sun_sc09_hpc_consortium_customer
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:49:49 +0000GeneralMany of you know Sun for our High Performance Computing systems. Well, Sun servers, storage, networking, and software are not the only parts of our high performance portfolio, we have some pretty high performance runners too, not to mention some of them are a bit competitive. To get into the competitive high performance spirit for this weekend's
<a href="https://meeting-reg.com/sunhpcc/registration.php">SC09 Sun HPC Consortium</a>, we will kick of the day Saturday with a fun, not too competitive run through the streets of Portland. Meet me and some of the team at 6:45 am on Saturday in front of the Hilton Portland Executive Towers. Registration for the
<a href="https://meeting-reg.com/sunhpcc/registration.php">SC09 Sun HPC Consortium</a> not required, and even IBM and HP runners are welcome to join in. But sorry, only customers and partners registered for the
<a href="https://meeting-reg.com/sunhpcc/registration.php">SC09 Sun HPC Consortium</a> can join after the run for the real scoop on the latest in HPC.
<p>
<iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&amp;source=s_q&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=921+SW+Sixth+Avenue+Portland,+Oregon&amp;sll=37.0625,-95.677068&amp;sspn=34.587666,56.513672&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=&amp;hnear=921+SW+6th+Ave,+Portland,+Multnomah,+Oregon+97204&amp;ll=45.526434,-122.675743&amp;spn=0.001868,0.003449&amp;t=h&amp;z=14&amp;output=embed"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&amp;source=embed&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=921+SW+Sixth+Avenue+Portland,+Oregon&amp;sll=37.0625,-95.677068&amp;sspn=34.587666,56.513672&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=&amp;hnear=921+SW+6th+Ave,+Portland,+Multnomah,+Oregon+97204&amp;ll=45.526434,-122.675743&amp;spn=0.001868,0.003449&amp;t=h&amp;z=14" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map</a></small>https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/sun_sc09_hpc_consortium_teaserSun SC09 HPC Consortium Teasermarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/sun_sc09_hpc_consortium_teaser
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:24:05 +0000GeneralWhat cuts costs of moving to 10GbE by up to 78% and requires only 1/6 the number of cables? Customers who have registered for the
<a href="https://meeting-reg.com/sunhpcc/registration.php">SC09 Sun HPC Consortium</a> this weekend in Portland will be among the first to find out.
<p>
Sun is one of the leading providers of high performance network fabrics including our <i>Magnum</i> line of
<a href="http://www.sun.com/products/networking/index.jsp">QDR InfiniBand switches</a> and we have been an innovator in the 10GbE space since we first introduced
dual 10Gbit Ethernet directly integrated onto the
<a href="http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T2/specs.xml">UltraSPARC-T2</a> processor several years ago.
Many customers already use high performance fabrics like 10GbE with our two socket, 16-core
<a href="http://www.sun.com/servers/blades/t6340/specs.xml">Sun Blade T6340</a> server module and as Intel and AMD preview upcoming 6, 8, and 12 core CPUs at SC09 and nearly every vendor talks about some sort of GPU integration, we believe the large majority of customers will need to move to high performance fabrics like QDR IB or 10GbE to take advantage of the ever increasing compute power in their servers.
<p>
So don't miss out, be the first to hear about our newest 10GbE products, register now for <a href="https://meeting-reg.com/sunhpcc/registration.php">SC09 Sun HPC Consortium</a>. Sorry IBM and HP employees, this event is for Sun customers, partners, and employees only. https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/sc09_sun_hpc_consortiumSC09 Sun HPC Consortiummarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/sc09_sun_hpc_consortium
Tue, 3 Nov 2009 08:14:01 +0000GeneralUpdates on <a href="http://bmworacleracing.com">BMW Oracle Racing</a> to ExaScale computing thoughts from Sun's Chief HPC Architect, Andy Bechtolsheim, are just some of the things you will hear about at the upcoming
<a href="https://meeting-reg.com/sunhpcc/registration.php">SC09 Sun HPC Consortium</a> being held immediately prior to SC09, November 14-15th in Portland Oregon. An invitation-only mid-week luncheon with Andy and Intel's Stephen Wheat is already sold out, but we still have a few whisper suite sessions available. This year, we have two whisper suites in our booth on the show floor, so you don't even have to leave the convention center to hear about the most exciting HPC updates.
<p>
You won't want to miss this exciting event, so
<a href="https://meeting-reg.com/sunhpcc/registration.php">register today.</a>
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/this_flash_will_hold_aThis Flash Will Hold A Lot Of Picturesmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/this_flash_will_hold_a
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:14:58 +0000GeneralEver run out space on your digital camera's flash card? Well, this flash won't quite fit in your camera, but at 1.92 TB in 1RU, my good friends at
<a href="http://www.smugmug.com">SmugMug</a> will be using
<a href="http://bestc.am/qjCh">their new flash</a>, a
<a href="http://www.sun.com//f5100">Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array</a> to store a lot of pictures. Just how fast is it, or how long would it take to store all the pictures from 1000, 2GB digital camera flash cards onto the F5100? Lets just say SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill called it "crazy fast" in his
<a href="http://twitter.com/DonMacAskill">Twitter post</a>. I guess that is a technical term in the photographic industry. All kidding aside, Don, who is clearly an avid photographer, has also been an avid user of Sun technology over the years, and writes about both in
<a href="http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/">his blog</a>. I look forward to hearing about how SmugMug is using their new F5100 in the coming weeks.https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/the_pitfalls_of_organic_gardeningThe Pitfalls of Organic Gardeningmarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/the_pitfalls_of_organic_gardening
Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:56:19 +0000GeneralI know my gardening friends on the East Coast will have no pity for my late fall challenges.
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/organic1.jpg">
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/organic2.jpg">https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/ssds_are_so_yesterday1SSDs Are So Yesterdaymarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/ssds_are_so_yesterday1
Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:21:36 +0000GeneralSome people are still touting Solid State Disks (SSDs) as hot new technology. Meanwhile, many High Performance Computing (HPC) customers have moved on to more innovative uses of flash technology. Come hear what some of our customers are doing with Sun's flash technology like the
<a href="http://www.sun.com/f5100">Sun Storage F5100</a> at next month's
<a href="http://meeting-reg.com/sunhpcc/">HPC Consortium</a> meeting immediately prior to
<a href="http://sc09.supercomputing.org">SC09</a> conference in beautiful Portland Oregon. Impatient, don't worry, some Sun HPC customers who participated in early testing of the F5100
<a href="http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/sss/f5100/quotes.xml">already have great things to say about it</a>. Customers like Chuck Sears, Manager of Research Computing at Oregon's very own College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, and Don Thorp, Production Systems, San Diego Supercomputer Center,
<a href="http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/sss/f5100/quotes.xml">share their experiences</a> with the F5100 in HPC environments.
<p>
And while the entire HPC community is focused on the upcoming SC09 conference right now, be sure to save the dates for the other major international supercomputer show,
<a href="http://www.supercomp.de/isc10/">ISC10</a> starting May 31 in Hamburg Germany. Meanwhile, check out the following video by my favorite movie star, Sun EVP John Fowler, talking about the F5100.
<p>
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https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_openworld_liveOracle OpenWorld Livemarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/oracle_openworld_live
Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:32:40 +0000GeneraloowCatch Scott and Larry in the opening keynote, Sunday at 5:45 pm PT on OpenWorld Live. But don't have too much fun tonight, get some rest and join Oracle's Judson Althoff Monday morning for a 5K partner run through the streets of San Francisco, meet Sun & other partners at 5th & Howard at 7 am.
<p>
The <a href="http://ow.ly/tRN6">Gospel of Java</a> according to James.
<p>
Oracle Press Release <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Oracle-and-Sun-Are-Faster-iw-2427188730.html?x=0&.v=1">
Oracle and Sun Are Faster Than IBM: Proof Now Available</a>
<p>
Go to the <a href="http://oracle.com/openworldlive">OpenWorld Live</a> site.
<p>
https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/high_performance_fabrics_not_justHigh Performance Fabrics - Not Just For HPC Anymoremarchamiltonhttps://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/entry/high_performance_fabrics_not_just
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:34:54 +0000GeneralTraditional High Performance Computing (HPC) customers continue to rapidly adopt the latest 40 GB/sec QDR InfiniBand technology delivered by the <a href="http://www.sun.com/dcs648">Sun InfiniBand Switch 648</a>. Recently, Oracle put their weight behind Sun's QDR technology in
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/exadata">Exadata v2,</a> incorporating the
<a href="http://www.sun.com/dcs36">Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36.</a>. Today, Sun further expands our family of high performance fabrics offering with the
<a href="http://www.sun.com/dcs72">Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 72.</a>
<p>
<img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/marchamilton/resource/l0v3_infiniband-switch72.jpg">
<p>
For the first time ever, the <a href="http://www.sun.com/dcs72">Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 72</a> lets you aggregate up to 72 QDR 4x ports into a single 1RU switch and multiple switches can be combined to cost effectively link up to 576 servers. For larger clusters, the
<a href="http://www.sun.com/dcs648">Sun InfiniBand Switch 648</a> supports up to 648 servers with a single switch, or up to 5184 servers in a full non-blocking fabric using eight 648 port switches.
<p>
This week's Forbes article titled,
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/26/adaptive-computing-jackson-technology-cio-network-supercomputing.html">Supercomputing in the Enterprise</a> talks about how non-HPC workloads including server virtualization and consolidation increasingly are adopting HPC technologies like high performance fabrics. While many HPC customers are using large high performance fabrics based on the Sun Datacenter Switch 648 to solve problems that simply couldn't be solved a few years ago, commercial customers increasingly need high performance fabrics just to keep up with advances in multi-core CPU technology.
<p>
Lets say that last year you purchased a
<a href="http://www.sun.com/servers/blades/x6250/">Sun Blade x6250 server module</a> with two dual-core x86 CPUs. That was a total of four processor core and might easily have required four GigE connections. While we sell a
<a href="http://www.sun.com/products/networking/ethernet/sunx8quadgigethernet/specs.xml"> Quad GigE</a> network card, fast forward to today and the same x6250 blade module is equipped with quad core CPUs or a total of eight processor cores. Assuming the same network bandwidth per core was required, that would be 8 GigE connections. Opt instead for the
<a href="http://www.sun.com/servers/blades/x6275/">Sun Blade x6275 server module</a> and you get 16 processor cores per server module. If you filled a rack with four
<a href="http://www.sun.com/servers/blades/6000chassis/">Sun Blade 6000 chassis</a> each filled with x6275 blades, and provided a GigE connection for each core, you would need an astounding 640 ethernet cables coming out of the back of the rack. It is no wonder why HPC and commercial customers alike are looking to high performance fabrics that offer cable aggregation and other benefits.
<p>
Of course, InfiniBand is not the only high performance fabric available. Sun sells a
<a href="http://www.sun.com/products/networking/ethernet/10gigethernet/index.xml">10 GigE network card</a> for our blades and also has a
<a href="http://www.sun.com/servers/blades/6000iomodule/10gbnem/index.xml">10 Gig Virtual Network Express Module</a> for the Sun Blade 6000.
<p>
So no matter if you are looking to build a high performance fabric out of InfiniBand or 10 GigE, Sun has products and solutions that can help you today.